The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komeito secured a total of 313 seats in the Oct. 22 House of Representatives election to maintain a two-thirds majority in the powerful lower house.

Results made available on Oct. 23 showed the LDP won a total of 284 seats in the lower chamber, including the independent candidates it additionally endorsed after the election, while its junior coalition partner Komeito won 29.

The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) boosted its pre-election strength from 15 seats to 55 to become the largest opposition party in Japan. This figure includes the seat won by Seiji Osaka, who ran as an independent and was endorsed by the CDP on Oct. 23.

The Party of Hope led by Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike performed poorly in the election, sliding to 50 seats from 57 before the vote.

The number of seats in the lower house was reduced by 10 in the election. The LDP was seven seats short of the 291 it won in the previous general election, but it surpassed the line of 261 seats giving the party an absolute stable majority. An absolute stable majority allows a political party or bloc to chair all standing committees in the chamber and secure a majority of seats in all of these panels.

Komeito fielded nine candidates in single-seat constituencies, but lost a seat in the Kanagawa No. 6 constituency. In the proportional representation vote, it managed to win 21 seats, down from 26 in the previous lower house election.

In the single-seat constituencies, the CDP and the Party of Hope each won 18 seats. In the proportional representation vote, the CDP won 37 seats and the Party of Hope 32. However, in its position as the second-largest party in Japan, the CDP shrunk from the 73 seats that the Democratic Party of Japan, the predecessor of the Democratic Party, had won in the previous election.

The Japanese Communist Party maintained one seat in a single-seat constituency, but its strength was practically halved, from 20 seats before the election to 11 in proportional representation blocs. Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party) also lost strength, falling from 14 seats to 11.

Due to Typhoon Lan, this year's 21st typhoon, the delivery of voting boxes from isolated islands in some regions was delayed, as a result of which vote counting in Aichi Prefecture city of Nishio and other areas was postponed until Oct. 23.